The Shacks of Skin
by euphratesdx
Summary: To determine the fate of a prodigal son and his beautiful, mysterious, gorgeous, talented, gorgeous, mysterious woman, the Zelandonii must invoke their latest, and truly greatest, tradition: emancipated personal representation.


The Shacks of Skin

The large group of people had gathered at the edge of their camp, pointing and gawking at the retrospectively obvious _brilliance_ of the man and woman riding horses towards them.

"By the hairy dangling vulva of the Great Mother!" An obese woman, known as Zelandoni the First Among the Zelandonii's Zelandonii, or Blubbera, cried. "Is that-?"

"That's Jondalar!" Interrupted a young woman, just barely on the jailbait side. Blubbera, who was obese, frowned at the girl's impudence in interrupting her, resolving then and there that the ritualized ripping of this insolent scamp's hymen would be performed by none other than Rapathon, eldest member of the Unwashed Pestilent Member Hearth. Her subsequent thoughts on this subject were distracted as Jondalar and the mysterious, beautiful, exotic, attractive, mysterious, gorgeous, mysterious woman next to him came just close enough that all in the camp could read the truth in his vivid blue eyes: he was totally pussy-whipped. This did not prevent them from, in one collective gush of sweet feminine musk, discharging the heady vaginal mucus of arousal down their legs.

Ayla instantly smelled, saw, and heard the collective discharge, for her senses had been sharpened by many generations of meticulous Aryan breeding. She was accustomed to such a response to Jondalar's intense cerulean orbs, although not necessarily to this number of women being present; the odor was really quite intense. Unnerved, she edged Whinney closer to Jondalar and his horse but he ignored her discomfort, pressing forward towards his people with a fanatically determined look. The chick'd better not freak on me now, he reflected as he slid off Racer's back and walked towards the people, his hands extended and his face fixed in a roguish, shit-eating grin.

Blubbera, who was practically suffocating under her own girth, scowled as Joharran, Jondalar's eldest brother and leader of their encircled shacks of skin, stepped forward to receive his sibling and the totally hot babe. He was Jondalar's eldest brother and the leader of their encircled shacks of skin, yet the right was hers to greet all returning prodigals. However, for the four summers since the Great Mother had demanded that she personally consume one of every three – and sometimes two, should they be exceedingly plump and tender – children born to this, the Ninth Circle of Shacks, her mobility had grown increasingly limited. Blubbera, who was frankly the biggest fucking woman anyone had ever seen, strained her senses to catch what Jondalar, Joharran, and the gathering crowd of other family members was saying to each other.

"I greet you, Marthona, Mother of Myself, Maker of Tools and All-Around Stud Muffin; Mother of Joharran, Unchallenged Despot; Mother of Folara, Who Would Justify Incest; and Mother of Thonolan, Who Died Violently A Few Years Ago So Let Us Just Forget Him Already."

"I greet you, Jondalar, Son of Myself, Serial Monogamist, and I am pleased to hear that we can continue with forgetting Thonolan already."

"Does the regal tradition of our mighty ancestors continue, Mother, of never employing contractions in our syntactically complex yet oddly stilted speech?"

"Yes, Jondalar, I am pleased to inform you that our mighty traditions persist."

"That is wonderful, Mother," Jondalar said, his deep azure gaze roving up and down Folara as he spoke with Marthona. By the stretch-marked expanses of the Great Mother's tits, he was totally ready to do someone – anyone, dammit – other than Ayla.

Ayla waited demurely behind him, her thoughts distracted by concern over what Jondalar's family would think of her. She knew they would not care for her. After all, no one could care for such an ugly woman, void of all proper Clan maiden virtues like the effortlessly fearful scurry or the obscene overdevelopment of the occipital lobe. While the Mamutoi had adored her, and the Sharamudoi had slavered over her, and the Ramudoi would have killed for her, and even the S'Armunai would have ravished her on the spot, she just knew that the Zelandonii would reject her. But they couldn't reject her son, she thought fiercely; he wasn't even with her, they couldn't reject him! It was temporally and spatially impossible!

Ayla's reverie was broken by Marthona. The older woman appraised the younger swiftly but thoroughly before turning to Jondalar.

"Nice tits," Marthona said with an equal amount of dignity and reserve, as befitted the former leader of the Ninth Circle of Shacks.

"Whatever." Jondalar said. "So, Folara, it has been a while since we have really had a chance to sit down and talk, just the two of us –"

"Can she talk?" Marthona demanded, and Jondalar's smarmy grin morphed quickly into a frown and a shrug.

"Sure, I guess. I mean, she responds to 'Ayla,' if you need her to do something."

Ayla slanted a demure look at Jondalar as he said her name and, recognizing that her beloved was fully engrossed in working his hand up Folara's shirt front – such unusual traditions of greeting she would have to learn! – stepped forward to introduce herself to Marthona.

"Grrrrrrrrrrreetings, Marrrrrrrrthona. I am Ayla of the Mamutoi, and the hottest, smarrrrrrrrrrtest, most generrrrrrrrrrrrally awesome perrrrrrson you will everrrrrr meet." Ayla said. The Zelandonii stood there in stunned silence; they had never, ever encountered anyone who spoke slightly differently from them. As one, they pointed at Ayla what fingers they had not lost to frostbite, gangrene, or crippling congenital deformities, and laughed uproariously.

Marthona frowned and raised her hands for silence. The first introduction to visitors was important, and followed a strict format dictated by the Great Mother Herself. Gradually the crowd quieted and a hint of anticipation rippled through them. Their latest and most brilliantly contrived tradition, emancipated personal representation, was about to be invoked.

"People of the Ninth Shack of Skins of the Zelandonii, I must ask you now – do we accept Ayla into our hearths, give her access to our food and protection, cripple her back and shorten her years with unending labor and childbirth, as we would our own…or do we stone her where she stands and crack open her bones to suck out the sweet, sweet marrow?"

A young man stepped forward from the crowd, both calloused hands raised. Marthona acknowledged him with a curt nod. "Speak, Markethosmithon."

Markethosmithon strode up to Ayla and planted himself between her and the crowd, his feet planted wide as he addressed them with an eloquence seldom heard outside of his descendents' esoteric standardized English placement exams. "Zelandonii, I must ask you all. When you first viewed this woman, were not your thoughts turned towards how you desired to bend her over the nearest rock without a scorpion, and then feast upon these fine retarded horses she has brought? Is there not a man among you to whom this has not occurred?" He pleaded, his eyes soulful and his gestures evocative as he pumped his pelvis a few times.

Many in the crowd nodded, and an affirmative murmur rose and then fell as Chewbaccon stepped forward to take Markethosmithon's place at front. Only shear politeness and absolute fear prevented them from hurling Chewbaccon off the nearest ledge; his build was hunched and bulky, and his features as unappealing and twisted as his half-Cro-Magnon, half-Neanderthal brain, from which polysyllabic words poured smoothly and, frankly, rather incongruously.

"Zelandonii, we already have our own women, many of whom have additional spare seconds available to them. I say our own native Zelandonii can perform all functions we need, and we do not need to accept outsiders, particularly hot, brilliant, awesome ones who will, in time, evoke irrational and violent responses in only those of us who are morally corrupt."

There were some nods to this, for all that the crowd despised Chewbaccon because he was, as Blubbera herself had put it, "a homicidal psychotic asshole." Nonetheless, his logic was particularly appealing to those with baser impulses and malnutrition. Marthona stepped forward again and called out clearly, "Do we accept her, Zelandonii? Or do we savagely kill her in a murderous fit of xenophobia that would be perfectly in keeping with our current ethical system?"

Ayla watched with interest as Marthona evoked the powerful Counting Words to determine her fate. Surely this would be a better system if there were two groups of people voting, she mused; representatives could be drawn from each hearth, and new ones selected every few years. She was so lost in thought that she started when Marthona clapped one grizzled, three-fingered hand on her shoulder.

"Welcome to the Ninth Shack of Skins, Ayla the Hottest. After all of the men finish with you, there are a couple of trees and a dead bison at the base of this cliff. Be a dear and bring them up for us."


End file.
